The Legends of Tomorrow is part of a shared universe made up of several (ever increasing) CW prime-time shows, plus several animated web series.

There are currently five prime-time shows: The Arrow, TheFlash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, and Black Lightning. (Listed in the order that they premiered.)

(Disclosure: I only watch three of those full time, the other 2 being too dark for me to continue and enjoy. Arrow I have watched sporadically, seeing some parts of a few different seasons. And Black Lightning I watched all of season one, but stopped after that. So there are some holes in my knowledge of those two shows. Luckily, I have you guys to fill in if I miss something!! )

All these shows exist in the same universe. (Edit: Mostly. Black Lightning probably is, but that is unconfirmed.) Characters visit friends on other shows, or start out on one show only to become a regular on a different one. But, this universe follows the multiple worlds theory, and some characters have the ability to travel to parallel Earths. The Arrow, Flash, and Legends all take place on the same earth, though characters on the Flash regularly interact with people from a number of different Earths. This includes Supergirl, who exists on her own Earth, and thus crosses over much more infrequently. (This is a remnant of the show beginning on CBS, before it moved to the CW and got folded into the shared universe.) Black Lightning (as of season one) appears to be on it’s own Earth unvisited by any of the other shows, and has not crossed over with any. (To my knowledge, as of season 1.) I don’t know if they plan to keep it that way or not.

Every year they do a big crossover between multiple shows, last year being the most ambitious (and complicated), bringing four shows together in one big story. (This was all the shows that were on the air at the time). They just about managed to include characters from all four shows, but it was also totally insane. This year (this week actually, starting tonight), they are only crossing over three shows: The Flash, Arrow, and Supergirl.

Since they are leaving the Legends OUT of the big crossover, The Legends decided they would still do a crossover, all by themselves!! Yep, they are doing a crossover with different versions of THEMSELVES!!!

Last week’s episode 4x07 set up a reality bending temporal paradox. Reality has basically broken around the Legends, and they … well, change! Here comes episode 4x08 - Legends of To-Meow-Meow!!!

(And then hiatus until April, I believe. )

SFG

Edited by Sci-Fi Girl, 09 December 2018 - 03:58 PM.

"A song is like a picture of a bird in flight; the bird was moving before the picture was taken, and no doubt continued after." - Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger's life was a picture of an idea in flight, and the idea will continue long after. As long as there are people with goodness and courage in their hearts, the idea will continue forever.

There are currently five prime-time shows: The Arrow, TheFlash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, and Black Lightning. (Listed in the order that they premiered.)...

All these shows exist in the same universe.

Almost all. As you say, there's no evidence so far that Black Lightning is in the same multiverse as the others, although I'd be surprised if they didn't cross them over eventually. After all, Supergirl wasn't originally supposed to cross over with the Arrowverse, but they abandoned that separation even before the show moved from CBS to The CW.

The Arrowverse also includes the animated webseries/DVD movie Vixen, which provided pivotal background material for the character of Amaya/Vixen (grandmother of the animated version) and the totem arc from last season of Legends. It's also retroactively folded in two older, formerly separate series: NBC's Constantine and (as of last week) CBS's 1990 The Flash (whose status as a parallel Earth has been hinted at on The Flash for years through the use of its cast members as namesakes/doppelgangers of their 1990 characters). It's rather remarkable -- it's got to be quite rare for a successful TV universe to salvage a cancelled show by folding its lead character into its world, let alone to do it twice. And it's likely to debut a Batwoman series next year, with the character being introduced in "Elseworlds Part 2" this Monday.

There's another animated webseries, Freedom Fighters: The Ray, which purports to be in the Arrowverse and whose title character and Nazi-Earth setting were the basis for last year's Crisis on Earth-X crossover, but oddly, it has major continuity conflicts with Crisis and the rest of the Arrowverse, so it can't really be counted as part of the universe's canon. The third animated webseries, Constantine: City of Demons, was expected to be in the Arrowverse and a sequel to the NBC series, but it turned out to be completely separate aside from starring Matt Ryan, with conflicting (and more comics-faithful) versions of characters and events that appeared on the NBC show. It appears to be more of a companion piece to the animated DVD movie Justice League Dark, which also featured Ryan as Constantine and was set in the ongoing Justice League/Batman continuity of the DC Universe Animated Original Movie series.

"You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right." -- xkcd

"The first man to raise a fist is the man who's run out of ideas." -- "H. G. Wells," Time After Time

There are currently five prime-time shows: The Arrow, TheFlash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, and Black Lightning. (Listed in the order that they premiered.)...

All these shows exist in the same universe.

Almost all. As you say, there's no evidence so far that Black Lightning is in the same multiverse as the others, although I'd be surprised if they didn't cross them over eventually. After all, Supergirl wasn't originally supposed to cross over with the Arrowverse, but they abandoned that separation even before the show moved from CBS to The CW.

Good point. I will add that to my post.

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The Arrowverse also includes the animated webseries/DVD movie Vixen, which provided pivotal background material for the character of Amaya/Vixen (grandmother of the animated version) and the totem arc from last season of Legends. It's also retroactively folded in two older, formerly separate series: NBC's Constantine and (as of last week) CBS's 1990 The Flash (whose status as a parallel Earth has been hinted at on The Flash for years through the use of its cast members as namesakes/doppelgangers of their 1990 characters). It's rather remarkable -- it's got to be quite rare for a successful TV universe to salvage a cancelled show by folding its lead character into its world, let alone to do it twice. And it's likely to debut a Batwoman series next year, with the character being introduced in "Elseworlds Part 2" this Monday.

There's another animated webseries, Freedom Fighters: The Ray, which purports to be in the Arrowverse and whose title character and Nazi-Earth setting were the basis for last year's Crisis on Earth-X crossover, but oddly, it has major continuity conflicts with Crisis and the rest of the Arrowverse, so it can't really be counted as part of the universe's canon. The third animated webseries, Constantine: City of Demons, was expected to be in the Arrowverse and a sequel to the NBC series, but it turned out to be completely separate aside from starring Matt Ryan, with conflicting (and more comics-faithful) versions of characters and events that appeared on the NBC show. It appears to be more of a companion piece to the animated DVD movie Justice League Dark, which also featured Ryan as Constantine and was set in the ongoing Justice League/Batman continuity of the DC Universe Animated Original Movie series.

And it just keeps getting bigger and more complicated!

SFG

"A song is like a picture of a bird in flight; the bird was moving before the picture was taken, and no doubt continued after." - Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger's life was a picture of an idea in flight, and the idea will continue long after. As long as there are people with goodness and courage in their hearts, the idea will continue forever.

By my count, if you include the 1990 Flash, Constantine, Vixen, and all four current CW series up to this week's midseason finales, that's 416 live-action episodes and one animated movie. Certainly one of the largest SFTV franchises by this point, though still a few hundred episodes short of Star Trek or Doctor Who (but surpassing Stargate).

"You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right." -- xkcd

"The first man to raise a fist is the man who's run out of ideas." -- "H. G. Wells," Time After Time

On one occasion, she even re-grew a crew member's lost hand! (Having had full medical scans on record for just such an occasion.)

Now I'm wondering why the Smiley Guy is down to one nipple.

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The suit's ability to shrink is powered by dwarf star alloy.

Did we ever get an explanation of that? Dwarf star material would be more likely to expand very fast than shrink at all.

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- Mick's heat gun: Basically a fancy flamethrower, never seems to run out of fuel.

- Zari's air totem: An ancient mystical stone, that gives the bearer power to control the wind. Originally worn as a necklace, the stone's setting was melted in ep 4x02. Ray then set it in a new housing for Zari: something between a smart-watch and a fit bit!

I've been noticing those.

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- A memory device: Used to selectively erase people's memories in order to preserve the timeline. Pretty much works like the Men in Black "flashy thing".

They used that on Kaya the first time she was there.

Sci-Fi Girl, on 09 December 2018 - 12:34 PM, said:

That is a funny thought, but then our crew of misfits wouldn't have a home to travel through time in!

Since they have those wrist bands, it seems odd that they use a ship at all. Wouldn't it safer to just travel directly to and from their base?

Sci-Fi Girl, on 09 December 2018 - 02:10 PM, said:

Since they are leaving the Legends OUT of the big crossover, The Legends decided they would still do a crossover, all by themselves!! Yep, they are doing a crossover with different versions of THEMSELVES!!!

Did we ever get an explanation of that? Dwarf star material would be more likely to expand very fast than shrink at all.

It's vintage comic-book science. The Atom was co-created by science fiction author Gardner Fox. The basic idea was that the high density and gravitation of dwarf star matter could compress things to reduced size (analogously to how a dwarf star is itself compressed from a regular star), but the debut story actually acknowledged that Ray had trouble keeping them small "due to the instability of the compressed atoms." How he manages to avoid the same fate himself is left as a mystery, at least to begin with.

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Since they have those wrist bands, it seems odd that they use a ship at all. Wouldn't it safer to just travel directly to and from their base?

The Time Bureau isn't really "their base." It didn't exist until the start of season 3, and the Legends were at odds with it for most of that season. Now they're all one big happy family, but the Waverider is the Legends' home and they're used to doing things their own way.

Besides, it can be useful to have a local base of operations like a timeship. What if something happens to block time travel from working, say? Or what if the future got wiped out while you were in the past and the Time Bureau no longer existed until you fixed history and brought it back?

"You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right." -- xkcd

"The first man to raise a fist is the man who's run out of ideas." -- "H. G. Wells," Time After Time